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MONTREAL — Jean-François Lisée’s two- word tweet summarized the mood of many in the party the day after the Parti Québécois’s stunning electoral loss.

“Il pleut,” Lisée wrote.

Indeed, it was raining all over the sovereignty landscape Tuesday as the reality of thrashing the party took Monday started to sink in.

With wounded leader Pauline Marois preparing to turn over power to premier-elect Philippe Couillard, the post mortem on what went wrong had already started.

The discussion over the future of the sovereignty option kicked off in earnest, too, even if appears it will take place against the backdrop of the leadership race to replace Marois who resigned Monday evening.

The shocking scene of three of her potential successors jockeying for the microphone at PQ headquarters and speaking even before Marois had a chance had tongues wagging.

For many, the stunt was indecent.

It was obvious the three were positioning themselves under the guise of praising Marois.

“I profoundly believe that, in the 21st century, Quebecers must starting making their decisions alone,” said the newly elected media mogul Pierre Karl Péladeau whose comments on sovereignty threw the PQ campaign to the mat.

Lisée, re-elected in Rosemont, was up next.

“It (the PQ) survived the Bourassa years and it took power. It survived the Charest years and it took power.

“It will survive the Couillard years and will take power.”

“We have a plan for freedom, for responsibility; to be masters of our own house, masters of our affairs,” said Bernard Drainville, the man behind the charter of secular values who was re-elected in Marie-Victorin.

“It (the PQ’s sovereignty vision) is managing our destiny ourselves, deciding by ourselves, for ourselves, what we want to make the Quebec of tomorrow into.

“And we will all defend this project, we will continue to carry it forward. We will never abandon it. Never.”

Some were left wondering how much time the party will really spend dissecting its loss and making course corrections.

Others said the sovereignty option — which Marois recognized was not a priority for Quebecers now — could be headed into a long period of hibernation.

“Every time they try and fire it up, it fails,” said Université de Sherbrooke political science professor Jean-Herman Guay.

“They have never been able to relight the flame. The sovereignty motor is not there.”

Guay noted with the 25.38 per cent share of the popular vote the PQ got Monday, real support — not poll support — has slipped back to the levels of the 1970s.

He said the lesson Monday is that divisive politics are not winning politics.

“Quebecers don’t like arguments,” he said.

That does not mean the option is dead. Federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau warned federalists in Ottawa Tuesday that there will always be people who are “passionate sovereignists.”

“An idea never dies,” added Couillard when he met the media in Quebec City.

Couillard did venture that he felt a shift of what he called the political “tectonic plates.”

Youth, he said, appeared particularly blasé about the country-building business.

One of the first persons urging the PQ to wake up and smell the coffee was one of their former top guys: Coalition Avenir Québec leader François Legault.

“These people have to undertake the same kind of reflection as I did in 2009,” Legault said. “At some point, we can’t go against the will of the majority of Quebecers.”

The “imaginary country,” of sovereignists is hurting the real one, he added.

But no sovereignty option means no reason for existing for the PQ.

“The sovereignist option cannot be put in question,” said former PQ leader Bernard Landry. “It would be catastrophic for our national psychology.

“Nations which have the capacity to be free should be and the majority of them are.

“Yesterday was a difficult day but it’s often in tragedy that happiness is born.”

Landry said Monday’s loss was more due “to a series of events and circumstantial errors,” than sovereignty.

While Landry refused to say the charter of values had a role in the debacle, former Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe did.

“If we want to build the Quebec of tomorrow it cannot be built with the “de souche,” (old stock Quebecers),” Duceppe told a TVA panel. “There are different branches and all persons living in Quebec are Quebecers. We need to find the necessary unity with something that sparks enthusiasm, not a divisive project.”

Duceppe, another potential leader, said Marois should have recognized the writing on the wall and said, point blank, there will not be a sovereignty referendum during the mandate.

Joliette MNA Véronique Hivon, one of Monday’s survivors, was not sugar-coating the result either. “We got the message that we have to go back and do our homework.”

Nowhere in the PQ were there signs of any hurry to pick a new leader. The party did not return calls.

But Lisée was talking, through a blog post.

It was unclear whether he was making amends for the scene on the election night stage when Lisée, who saw his majority melt from 9,000 on 2012 to 1,500 Monday, wrote a “Dear Pauline,” letter.

After noting how thankless a task politics can be, Lisée praised her courage and work, noting “you were not rewarded.”

“Pauline, voters were hard on you yesterday,” he wrote. “Hard towards our dream of a country to build; hard like a third referendum defeat; hard as another No.”

He tells Marois she lost because she wanted to give Quebecers the possibility of a choice in case, one day, they wanted to give themselves a country.

They did not reciprocate.

“Closing and double-bolting the door was more important for a great number of Quebecers then other considerations,” he wrote.

“So you see, Pauline, you have nothing to reproach yourself for. But at the heart of things, you stood up, with your convictions.,” he wrote. “Yesterday, my dear Pauline, there were not enough Quebecers who thought like you, who thought like us.”

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